Ensuring quality interaction between a patient and their respiratory treatment apparatus can be significant. For example, quality interaction between a patient and their ventilator is critical to minimize the work of breathing of the patient. Increased work of breathing caused by patient-ventilator asynchrony is associated with negative patient outcomes and has been shown to be highly prevalent; studies have shown up to 47% of ventilator delivered breaths may be asynchronous.
With proper supervision and adjustment of ventilator settings, asynchrony may be manually mitigated by the clinician. However, monitoring asynchrony is a challenge. Knowledge of its existence may require high resolution and real-time display of airway pressure delivered by the ventilator, the patient's airflow and a measure of inspiratory activity, such as diaphragmatic EMG or esophageal pressure measured invasively via a balloon catheter. Furthermore, expert visual interpretation of these signals can be critical to diagnose the quality of patient-ventilator interaction.
It may be desirable to develop further methods and devices for automating detection of asynchrony that may improve respiratory treatment apparatus.